November 18, 2009

I was feeling pretty good at a recent tipoff luncheon when a visible figure in the women’s game — not a coach — nearly spoiled my appetite and my attitude when she said:

“Women’s basketball is more than a sport. It’s a movement.”

This comment was uttered without elaboration, and it was meant primarily for attendees to support their favorite teams. Harmless enough. But a few moments later, I wanted to cringe.

Perhaps it’s just me reading something into remarks that were never intended. But for some of its most zealous backers, women’s basketball can never be just a sport. There must be social significance attached, a cause espoused, a watertight ideology relentlessly declared. The games can never be about the games. They must carry with them the heavy meaning that the flagship women’s sport truly is a movement, that in fact it should lead that movement.

If you think I’ve been surrounded by four walls too long, you are right. I admit to having some cabin fever in recent weeks writing previews and preparing for the season. But I didn’t pull these ideas out of the thin air. Or any place else. In the brief time between a sizzling WNBA finals and the start of the college season, there was enough eye-rolling lunacy coming from the Sisterhood to last for a whole year.

On the eve of the college season up popped a familiar bugaboo that activists simply cannot bear to contemplate: Female basketball players dressed up provocatively on the cover of their team’s media guide in . . . dresses.

The analyses ranged from the well-intended to the dreary to the downright depressing. Hoo boy, the folks at Texas A & M really have the agony aunts riled up something fierce. These young Aggies, we’re lead to believe, are contributing to their own marginalization. (Then they went out and marginalized Duke quite nicely.)

Don’t they know that there’s propaganda masquerading as “longitudinal research” (also available only behind a pay wall) that insists that this sort of thing just doesn’t work?

I’m not trying to be unfair to the activists and their media minions, because they do have some sympathetic guys who drink the same Kool-Aid. Indeed, they do very well to mimic the unhappy academic jargon that the outside world just doesn’t understand.

As their dog whistling lined up a fifth column to attack, they sincerely believed they were doing this on behalf of women athletes.

Yet the response from one player in particular, someone who’s struggled mightily to make it in the pro game, totally demolished these hardline notions. That a younger generation of players has moved beyond all this ought to be proof that the activism that has been necessary in the past has been an unqualified success:

“It’s not about sexuality at all. It’s a photo shoot. As women, we want to show both sides. I don’t understand why it has to be us trying to prove we’re not gay.”

Naturally, those sentiments have been ignored by their foremothers, intent on seeing women’s sports through a 1970s feminist prism that they’re either unable or unwilling to shake. Especially with so many “feminine archetypes” apparently still out there to destroy. (Why doesn’t Candace Parker realize she’s letting herself become marginalized too?)

This is just the problem: The development of women’s sports, and especially basketball, has largely outgrown these social critiques. Now the primary challenge they all face is their viability as business entities. What’s been created and nurtured over several decades, and after plenty of struggle, is on some thin ice.

Now there’s marginalization. Media representations pale in comparison to the cold reality that for all the gains women have made in basketball, the pro game — the highest level of all — remains in a very fragile state. It ought to be flattering that concrete ideas on strengthening it are coming from most unlikely places.

As we’ve entered the period of Women’s Basketball 3.0, we’ve got to shed the notion that this sport is a movement. I agree that it is more than a sport in this respect — it has become a business, a very substantial one, that doesn’t need howling over a James Bond pose in a “virtual guide” to overshadow the real world that most female basketball players know.

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Contributing Authors

Mike FlynnMike Flynn is owner and operator of Blue Star Basketball and U.S. Junior Nationals. He is a National Evaluator and publishes the Blue Star Report which ranks the top 100 high school girls basketball players in the nation. He also serves as Secretary of the Middle Atlantic District AAU, National Chair for AAU Lacrosse, Consultant to Gatorade for girls basketball, member of the McDonalds All –American selection committee, and Consultant for Nike Global Basketball.

Chris MennigChris Mennig is the National Evaluator for Blue Star Basketball, & Event Coordinator for US Junior Nationals. Mennig was a women's college
basketball assistant coach/recruiter for over 10 years, with stops at Bryant
College, Brown, St. Bonaventure, Illinois State, Arizona State & the University of
Illinois. He has been named Coach of the Year at the high school level on multiple occasions, as well as leading a program to a State Championship. Presently a member of the McDonald's All-American committee, he
has lectured at various recruiting clinics as well as at the Women's
Basketball Coaches Association Convention.

Kevin LynchKevin Lynch has been a member of the Blue Star Basketball family for nearly 15 years. Lynch was regarded as one of the most successful and respected travel team coaches in the country. He was a coach for the Nike sponsored Philadelphia Belles for 14 years. Lynch has guided the program to a national title in 2003, and runner-up in 2005 & 2006. Lynch has had the opportunity to work with over 50 players that went on to compete at the Division I level. Including five McDonald's All-Americans, seven WBCA-All-Americans, and 11 Parade All-Americans. Lynch is presently a member of the McDonald's All-American committee.

Duffy BurnsDuffy Burns is a national evaluator for Blue Star Basketball after over 25 years in collegiate basketball. Duffy spent his first six years on the men's side with stops a programs such as UMass & Pittsburgh working with the likes of John Calipari. He has now spent nearly 20 years on the women's side. Holding assistant positions at Central Connecticut State, Ball State, & Toledo, as well as eight years as the head coach at Cleveland State. Burns, is one of the more respected and long standing members of the WBCA, he has served on the Kodak All-American Committee, the WBCA Board of Directors as the Male Coaches of Women's Basketball representative, and on the Francis Pomeroy Naismith Committee just to name a few.

Wendy ParkerWendy Parker is a sportswriter, blogger and web editor who has followed women's basketball for nearly two decades. She has covered 15 Women's Final Fours, primarily for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she also wrote about college football and other college sports, the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics as well as the 2002 men's soccer World Cup and the 1999 and 2003 Women's World Cups. She has been a correspondent for Basketball Times since 1991 and currently serves as women's editor for the magazine and is a longtime member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.

Winston KellyWinston Kelly is owner and operator of GameBall Magazine. He created GameBall to cover the basketball market of New York City and the surrounding quad-state area of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York. He has been a talent evaluator for the Blue Star Report for over 10 years. He is a Member of the McDonalds All-American selection committee. Winston also does Talent Identification for the Big Apple Evaluating Services and a number of other minor reports. He is a member of ExodusBasketball.com/ExodusTV.